In Mean Boy (Anchor), the story of nineteen-year-old Larry Campbell, who idolizes a hard-drinking, plaid jacket-wearing, wood-chopping poet named Jim Arsenault, Lynn Coady revels in the Canadian literary scene of the 197s. This is an affectionate and funny novel that takes us through a year of Larry’s life at Westcock University, during which he tries to figure out how to be a poet, how to hold his liquor and how to navigate the politics of Westcock’s incestuous literary community. Now excuse me while I pour myself a beer and listen to a scratchy recording of Al Purdy reading “At the Quinte Hotel.”